Comments | hamsterwoman: Reading roundup

hamsterwoman

Reading roundup

Aug 21, 2011 13:50

So, it's been awhile since I've done a reading roundup, apparently...

40. Brenna Yovanoff, The Replacement -- an interesting and unusual take on the "urban fantasy with fairies" genre I really enjoy. This one's even darker than the Tithe and Wicked Lovely universes, although it does get a sort of happy ending after the darkness. ( MAJOR SPOILERS )

osc, ya, grrm, kushiel, a: scott westerfeld, leguin, ebear, a: orson scott card, a: ursula vernon, a: ursula leguin, a: naomi novik, a: caissie st onge, a: elizabeth bear, a: brenna yovanoff, temeraire, short stories, kidlit, a: jacqueline carey, reading, a: holly black

Leave a comment

Back to all threads

hamsterwoman August 21 2011, 22:09:55 UTC

You might be right about the Dothraki setting the bar so low, that anything less one-dimensional and savage seems like a win... but, yeah, I thought they were pretty well done in general. And FUN! There was not a lot of that in the Moirin books since she left Alba, really.

I don't know much about India other than the Hindu pantheon and food, so I think I felt the missed opportunity of "it could've been so awesome but isn't!" less keenly, but oh god the BLAND. JC can defiitely write fun characters even in travelogue, so what the hell happened? She ran out of personalities for the book?

Moirin overturning the caste system is still fail, but based on her initial conversation about it with Amrita I thought it was going to be single-handed, and the fact that it was the confrontation with Jagrati (and later conversation with Laysa, apparently, offscreen) that made Amrita decide to overhaul the caste system made it actually less bad than I'd been expecting. But it was still Moirin who, based on her experiences with scripture in Vralia, planted the idea that human interpretations of divine decrees are fallible, so... yeah. Still not good. (Although Moirin's wanderings from place to place are so random, I did kind of appreciate it that her time with Vralia was somehow connected with her time in Bhaktipur, 'cos at least it wasn't totally like JC throwing darts at a world map...)

how un-romanticized Moirin/Bao are. I wanted those two crazy kids to make it work

Haha, yes, I'm with you! After the epic estabkushment-defying love stories of Phedre/Joscelin and Imriel/Sidonie, it's refreshing to have these two be all, "Oops, I kind of got married" and "Oops, I slept with my ex-lover's ghost the night before my wedding" along with the heroic stuff.

Back to all threads